


We're Still Waiting for Tomorrow

by Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/F, Happy Ending, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, Reunions, Romantic Fluff, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13037841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/pseuds/Zoi%20no%20miko
Summary: Utena, battered and broken, wakes with nothing but fleeting memories of the girl she failed to save. But she has to move forward. The girl would have wanted her to move forward.





	We're Still Waiting for Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kisuru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisuru/gifts).



Utena's world pulses like the darkness between street lights while driving, alternating strips of bright pain and the haze of painkillers that block out her thoughts. She's broken her pelvis, right femur, left radius and ulna, five ribs. The list they read her goes on and on; she listens without comment. In the moments when the drugs wear off she can barely breathe. The shards of memory cut through her more vivid and painful than any broken bone.

The accident. The speeding red car. The girl she needed to save. The moment of impact frozen in time, where the girl's hand slips from hers...

"You're very lucky, Miss Tenjou," the nurse says, and Utena feels anything but.

@}}>\-----

The girl is dead, Utena knows that much. Knows, even though no-one will speak of her. Even though she can't remember her name.

The girl that was important to her, the girl that she tried to save, is dead.

It's hard to respond to words like "recovery" when she knows she never will.

@}}>\-----

There's something wrong with Utena's brain. Even though her body heals, the empty holes remain in her mind where memories had once been. She tries to explain it to the doctors, but it doesn't come out right, and the shrink only asks questions where all the answers come easily. She can talk about school, her classes, Wakaba. She can talk about the sports she might never play again. And the shrink and the machines and the scans call ner _normal_ , even though she _knows_ they're wrong. There's a whole layer of memory that's missing: a girl with no name, a girl that's dead. A girl who was important to her. A girl that was suffering. 

A girl she failed to save.

"You need to come to terms with the accident," her shrink says gently. "You're a strong girl, you can recover. You can be happy again."

She can't manage to tell her that her happiness is the part of her that's missing.

@}}>\-----

Utena learns to walk again, slowly but surely. She learns how to run. She catches up with her schoolwork, she starts to think about university. She's afraid, always, that she's going to fail. Fall down, break herself again, flunk a test. Fail herself like she failed that girl with no name.

But she pushes forward. She has to. Because that girl would have wanted her to move forward, to move towards happiness. She knows that better than she knows her own name.

She has to move forward to honor the girl that can't.

@}}>\-----

On the day Utena graduates from high school there's no-one special waiting in the audience to cheer for her. She's used to that, prepared for it. She doesn't expect the cheers from her classmates that ring out through the auditorium. For a moment she freezes on stage, wondering. She's never felt close to anyone; it's hard, when she already knows what true closeness is, when that part of her is still missing. But she's tried to treat everyone with kindness, to set aside her own unhappiness. Somehow she must have managed to move forward.

"We're so proud of you, Tenjou-san." Her school counselor presses a single long-stemmed rose into her hand, tied with a ribbon. Both pink, like her hair. The scent is strange and familiar and melancholy, but she keeps the flower close to her chest as she sits down again.

It reminds her of her lost memories, of the girl she knows she should remember. She was in love with her, she realizes, though she's known it all along. The girl she failed to save.

But she did her best, Utena realizes in the same moment. She'd done everything she could. And she's still doing her best to move forward. To be who that girl would have wanted her to be.

For the first time in a long time, Utena feels a true flicker of happiness.

@}}>\-----

Utena slips away from graduation before anyone can stop her. Her classmates and teachers have families, places to be. She's certain that several would invite her to go with them, but she finds herself wanting to be alone. To take her tiny bit of remembrance and the flicker of happiness and hold them close to her heart with the pink rose.

Her apartment building is quiet and empty, and she finds herself glad of it as she lets herself inside and climbs the stairs. Then she reaches her floor and stops.

There's a woman, standing in front of her apartment door, in a neat pink suit. In the setting sun, the waves of hair that cascade from under her hat are aubergine, and suddenly Utena can remember running her fingers through them.

The woman's green eyes shine bright, even in the half light. Her hands, folded in front of her, clench tighter. "Welcome home, Utena-sama."

"Himemiya." Utena's lips form a name she doesn't know. Except she _does_ know it, it's as familiar on her tongue as her own, and as the name leaves her lips it brings so much more with it, like she's whispered the secret password to the temple of her memory.

Anthy. _Anthy_ , here, alive. Even though she'd fallen, been torn away from Utena's fingers in the accident. Not an accident after all, not a car. A tower, an arena, a castle in the sky. The hatred of the world turned towards Anthy. A life that had been filled with nothing but suffering.

She'd thought she could save her, could take Anthy away from everything that had hurt her. Even after Anthy had betrayed her, even finally knowing everything Anthy had done, she'd tried so hard, wanted so badly to save her. She'd thought she could be a prince, and she'd failed.

But Anthy was here, now. Which meant....

"Himemiya," she whispers again, crossing the distance between them. 

Anthy's eyes widen in happiness, lips turning up into a smile. "I've come all this way to be with you," she says, and her lips feel like rose petals as she leans in to kiss her.

@}}>\-----

There's still empty holes in Utena's memories. She knows there was a man, someone she trusted. Someone they both trusted, who hurt them. Who did things to two fourteen year old girls that no adult should even think of. Those holes she welcomes. She has enough back. 

She has Anthy.

"You're not a witch anymore, are you?" Utena asks as they stand in the shower together, the hot water washing away the dust of the day. She watches Anthy's lips purse, tilting her head, and a curl of hair falls free from the knot on top of her head, snaking down over her breast with a rivulet of water.

"I don't know," she says finally. "But it doesn't matter anymore. Those roles aren't real. You taught me that, Utena-sama. It's what helped me to finally leave. To come to this world where we can be together."

It's what she's always wanted, Utena realizes. Even then, when she was so young, so confused about her place in the world, so shy about what she was feeling. She doesn't feel shy now, hadn't hesitated when Anthy had suggested they shower, even though there's only one reason to shower so early in the day. She doesn't feel shy, and clearly neither does Anthy, but Utena still lets the moment stretch on. It feels good, to reach down take Anthy's hand like she has so many times in the past, filling the emptiness between her fingers with Anthy's.

"Ne, Himemiya. You really have kept your promise to me, haven't you? I'm sorry I doubted."

Anthy smiles, sweet and adoring, and presses closer. Her body feels warm and soft and _right_. "No. You never doubted."

@}}>\----- -----<{{@

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yule, Kisuru!! Your letter made me have some lovely thoughts about Utena and Anthy, and though this is just a little post-series drabble I hope it hits the spot!


End file.
